Caroline Coon
Encyclopedia
Caroline Coon is an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 artist, journalist and political activist. Her artwork, which often explores sexual themes from a feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 standpoint (she is bisexual), has been exhibited at many major London galleries, including the Saatchi Gallery
Saatchi Gallery
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art, opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985 in order to exhibit his collection to the public. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames and currently in Chelsea. Saatchi's collection, and...

 and the Tate
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

.

Coon was born to a family of Kent landowners and had five brothers. She left home at 16 and came to London to find a job. She lived in Notting Hill
Notting Hill
Notting Hill is an area in London, England, close to the north-western corner of Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...

 and began by doing some modelling work. Trained as a figurative
Figurative art
Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...

 painter, Coon became involved in the 1960s underground movement
UK underground
The Underground was a countercultural movement in the United Kingdom linked to the underground culture in the United States and associated with the hippie phenomenon. Its primary focus was around Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill in London...

 in London while still attending art school. In 1967 she founded Release
Release (agency)
Release, founded in 1967 by Caroline Coon and the late Rufus Harris , is a UK agency that provides legal advice and arranges legal representation for people charged with the possession of drugs...

, an agency set up to provide legal advice and arrange legal representation for young people charged with the possession of drugs. She remains politically active, campaigning primarily for feminist causes, including the legalisation of prostitution.

In the 1970s, Coon became involved in the London punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 scene, writing about the bands for Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...

and providing artwork for groups such as The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...

 (whom she briefly managed) and The Police
The Police
The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the vast majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting , Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland...

. In the "Punky Business
Punky Business
Punky Business is an episode of the British comedy television series The Goodies— a BAFTA-nominated series for Best Light Entertainment Programme.This episode is also known as "Punkerella" and as "Rock Goodies"....

" (punk rock) episode of the BBC comedy series The Goodies
The Goodies (TV series)
The Goodies is a British television comedy series of the 1970s and early 1980s. The series, which combines surreal sketches and situation comedy, was broadcast by BBC 2 from 1970 until 1980 — and was then broadcast by the ITV company LWT for a year, between 1981 to 1982.The show was...

, Jane Asher
Jane Asher
Jane Asher is an English actress. She has also developed a second career as a cake decorator and cake shop proprietor.-Early life:...

 plays a parody of Coon ("Caroline Kook"), the dream lover of Tim Brooke-Taylor
Tim Brooke-Taylor
Timothy Julian Brooke-Taylor OBE is an English comic actor. He became active in performing in comedy sketches while at Cambridge University, and became President of the Footlights club, touring internationally with the Footlights revue in 1964...

's aspiring punk rock star.

Coon inspired the Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt is an English musician, and founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine, with a long and distinguished solo career...

 song "O Caroline", The Stranglers
The Stranglers
The Stranglers are an English punk/rock music group.Scoring some 23 UK top 40 singles and 17 UK top 40 albums to date in a career spanning five decades, the Stranglers are the longest-surviving and most "continuously successful" band to have originated in the UK punk scene of the mid to late 1970s...

' "London Lady", and - according to Coon herself- Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

's "She Belongs To Me
She Belongs to Me
"She Belongs to Me" is a song by Bob Dylan, and was first released as the second track on his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. It was one of the first anti-love songs and one of Dylan's first of many songs that describe a "witchy woman"...

" (though this claim is highly questionable; most Dylan experts would argue that the song is actually about either Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....

 or Dylan's future wife Sara
Sara Dylan
Sara Dylan , born Shirley Marlin Noznisky and later known as Sara Lownds, was the first wife of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and mother of singer Jakob Dylan. She was married to Bob Dylan from November 1965 until June 1977.-Early life:Little is known about Sara Dylan's early life or family...

).

In June 2000, Coon won damages
Damages
In law, damages is an award, typically of money, to be paid to a person as compensation for loss or injury; grammatically, it is a singular noun, not plural.- Compensatory damages :...

 of £73,000 from publisher Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

 after author Jonathon Green
Jonathon Green
Jonathon Green is a British lexicographer of slang and writer on the history of alternative cultures...

, in his 1998 book All Dressed Up: the Sixties and the Counter-Culture, suggested that in Release's early days she traded sexual favours for donations. The book was withdrawn.

Publications

  • The Release Report on Drug Offenders and the Law, Sphere Books, 1969, ISBN 0722124457
  • 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion, Hawthorn Books, 1977, ISBN 0801561299

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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